The present invention relates to an apparatus for awarding a progressive jackpot payout in games of chance.
Games of chance having various payout possibilities are well known to those in the art. For example, in the game of roulette, bets such as odd, even, red, and black may provide a payout on a 1 to 1 ratio, while bets on groups of numbers such as first third, second third, or third third provide payouts on a 3 to 1 ratio and bets on a single number such as 7, 12, or 25 provide payouts on a 35 to 1 ratio. Other games such as slot machines offer various payouts depending upon the frequency of appearance of the various symbols on the slot machine wheels. For example, all oranges showing on a 4-wheel machine may pay at the rate of 10 to 1 while all plums pay at the rate of 15 to 1, all bars pay at the rate of 20 to 1, and all 7's pay at the rate of 30 to 1. Although the possibility of various and higher payouts awarding successful bets serves to create a high level of interest in game play, it has been found that high level progressive jackpots which are paid out only rarely upon the occurrence of certain events adds more excitement to such games of chance. While certain progressive payout schemes are known as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,459 issued to Kaufman, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,728 issued to Barrie et al, the level of payout is not necessarily correlated to the probability of a jackpot payoff occurring; and as a result, such jackpot wins do not occur often enough to sustain a high level of play or occur at such a rate as to exceed the amount of funds which the house has collected in a jackpot pool for payout to jackpot winners.
There is, accordingly, a need in the art for a progressive jackpot payout scheme which sustains a high level of play and is realistically related to the number of bets which have been collected by the house for use in the jackpot pool.